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Kategorie: Science

Posts about the variety of science and their (assumed) knowledge.

Überblick zur Klimakriese und den Klimakriegern 2012

In der Zeit fand ich einen guten Artikel, der die monetären Hingergründe der «Klimakrieger» recherchiert: «Wie von der Industrie bezahlte PR-Manager der Welt seit Jahren einreden, die Erderwärmung finde nicht statt. Chronologie einer organisierten Lüge.» Sehr lesenswerter Beitrag auch zum Thema Mediokratie.

Stefan Rahmstorf betreibt auf den SciLogs den Blog «KlimaLounge – Nah dran am Wandel». Im Blogbeitrag «Am Puls der Klimakriese» geht es um «die grundlegenden Daten und Belege zur aktuellen globalen Erwärmung, zur Zunahme von Wetterextremen und zum Anstieg des Meeresspiegels. Der Vortrag spannt einen Bogen von den Eiszeiten bis zu der Frage, wie wir die Klimakrise bewältigen können.»

Der Video-Mitschnit des Vortrags liefert einen guten Überblick zur aktuellen Datenlage und die Kommentare scheinen sich auch interessant zu entwickeln.

Am Puls der Klimakrise – Forschungsergebnisse zu Temperatur, Eis und Wetterextremen from Elevate Festival on Vimeo.

 

Published inConspiracy TheoryEcologyScienceThink!

NASA video: Milkyway collides with Andromeda Galaxy

Wow, her comes another brain teaser for meditation. Evolution in cosmic scale, watch the timeline.

 

(Original video, Soundtrack: Bolero, Zappa style)

Wikipedia says: «In 2012, researchers came to conclusion that it is a definite hit after using the Hubble Space Telescope between 2002 and 2010 to painstakingly track the motion of Andromeda. Such collisions are relatively common. Andromeda, for example, is believed to have collided with at least one other galaxy in the past, and several dwarf galaxies such as SagDEG are currently colliding with the Milky Way and being merged into it.»

This is the reason I want mankind to survive: In 3.75 billion years I want to be reborn to meditate under the nightsky, as it is shown in the third picture below. If you don’t let me do that, I will hate you. And I will appear in your every nights nightmare and badge you like you can’t imagine! Seriously! You don’t want to risk that! Let me have a nice body in the far future – so take care of our environment and your genes. :rant:

Nightskies – Andromeda collides with the milkyway. Click for brief description.
Nightskies – Andromeda collides with the milkyway. Click for brief description.

For the nightsky in the fifth pic we will need to emigrate on another planet, cause sweet home Alabama is gonna be burned by the sun in 5 billion years. Just imagine where mankind will have evolved: That is more than the time live is old on earth now! I don’t mind short legs and green skin as long I still gonna be having eyes and a back to lie on the grass. :mrgreen:

If you’d like a lighter meditation on the topic of evolution, have a look here: Experience the Scale of the Universe with all senses

Published inMeditationScienceThink!

Experience the Scale of the Universe with all senses – or finding God

The Scale of the Universe: Full Micro
Microscale of the Universe

The Scale of the Universe: Macro
Macroscale of the Universe

(…especially the ones they say we haven’t got)

Some years ago I posted an old movie clip «The Power of Ten». If you haven’t seen this, I suggest to do that – it takes some minutes and will leave you astonished for some days. It starts showing a square meter, then zooms out to the edge of the universe, goes back and zooms in to the quarks.

This small Flash-App «Scale of the Universe» is something similar, based on actual science data. The design looks a bit like a Power Point presentation – but hey, this is about science, not art. 🙂

Just thinking about that light would need seven times longer to cross the estimated size of the universe (93 billion lightyears) at light speed than it is old (13.4 billion yars that is) – makes me … aware. Astonished.

They say human minds cannot apprehend such dimensions. I’m not sure. Start thinking about the last year of your life, how much time it was; about 10 years of you like; your whole lifetime; how many of your ancestors lived  in the last 1’000 years?; the technical progress in the last 10’000 years; 50’000 years ago modern humans started colonizing the continents; anatomically modern humans appearing in Africa 200’000 years ago – how many descendants will you have in the year 202’012? Visualize your whole lifetime; 1’500’000 years ago were the first simple huts; 2’400’000 years ago appearance of the homo genus – imagine the winters: no food and it’s damn cold – they needed to wait for about 2’394’500 years for sewerage; modern-type butterflies appeared 40 mio years ago. Take your time, repeat, imagine the years.

Now watch the clip «650 million years in 120 seconds», it’s about plate tectonics and starts 400 mio years ago. Try to watch your place on earth while you think about the points above. If you do it right, your mind starts to screw – so switch it of. But let your brain whirl, while dimensions clear away. You need to bear and hold that whirling to go on. Take your time, repeat.

Life on Earth Graph
Life on Earth Graph

Now think of the globe, how she is born, how mother sun gets her most intelligent child. It’s 9 billion years after Big Bang – 4.5 billion years later the mid-aged earth will have the humans, an itching pest (see the joke). You are something like a gut bacteria that goes cancering its host. Not more, but not less. Life exists today since 3’800’000’000 years. Will your descendants be able to colonize a new planet when our sun becomes a supernova in 6 billion years? How many lover’s griefs will have been till then? How many agony over all, if you will pile it up then, for all civilisations? And on all planets in all galaxies? And, why? Take your time, repeat.

From today, go back three earth lifetimes to the big bang. Imagine the bang. Room gets created, a bubble. The physical laws get created. Matter gets created. The bubble expands. It accelerates its expansion. Today, you need to travel 20 times the age of earth at light speed to cross the estimated size of the universe. Do some travelling through space, try to find the milkyway, the sun, while staying aware of the whole. Do some travelling through time, watch the birth and evolution of all life on earth, while staying aware of your lifetime! That’s what I call a cool makro-meditation!

:oldman:

Did you arrive without going schizo? Did you find God? Where is she? Not so much out there I guess, but more in there. Science is about what it is, mysticism about how it feels. Macro- and microcosmos is not the same, but feels like the same. Science and mysticism are like your hands: They are the same, but are not. I’m sure we all can apprehend such dimensions, and many more. Just keep on practicing! Master the quanta. Let me know of your mikro-meditation, that’s not my favorite terrain. 😉

 

Published inMeditationMysticismScienceThink!

The pale blue dot – Carl Sagan

Today’s post is inspired by a picture of the voyager I: The earth viewed from 6 billion kilometers. The first video by Michael Marantz on Vimeo shows some breathtaking fast motion pictures with (kind of) poems by Carl Sagan.

 

The second you can find on YouTube by FFreeThinker. It’s actually about the named picture, again with some (kind of) poems by Carl Sagan.

 

Here’s the picture of our home (brief description):

The pale blue dot (NASA)
The pale blue dot (NASA)

If you cannot find your hometown above, here’s some enlargement (brief description):

Earthrise by Apollo 8 (NASA)
Earthrise by Apollo 8 (NASA)

Hope you feel better now, as I do! This is true power of nature, which is the cosmos. No life with no pale blue dot… :nono:

Found and inspired by Detritus.

Published inMeditationScienceThink!

Video: 650 million years in 120 seconds

Some time ago I found this video on dailymotion.com, which sent me on a real trip. Countless times I watched the video, meditating on it and pondering which meaning my oh so vain ego fulfils in this wonderful world.

Experience perishability in 120 seconds

(Edit: It’s a flv video which does not play right now… sorry. You can download it.)

 

See how the earth’s face changes in 650 million years in this continental drift animation. See all your egocentrism crushed by Africa – at least if you live in Europe… (not shure, but the vid might come from BBC)

If you think that someone threatens your little garden and wants to steal your accumulated riches, you should check the correctness of your values – fear is a bad guide. Just for this task the video is perfectly suitable:

First you will start to feel lost. Sometime after that you should have slowly dissolved, floating in a cosmic condition which is not easy to endure. But, slowly, you then should start to feel truly at home – and you’ll get closer to the mystical point of no return. No need to ask for what you want anymore, but to find out who you are…

Just to remind you: Homo Sapiens walks since 300’000 to 400’000 years – that’s not even half a million, while life started about 2500 million years ago and civilization is a few millennia old. Do you really think you control anything?  If you do, then it’s your charity, nothing more.

Published inMeditationMysticismScienceThink!

Carnegie Mellon Lecture: Global Climate Change

On YouTube I stumbled upon this actual lecture about Climate Change. It is mainly in three parts:

  • Facts about climate change from an environmental point of view
  • Needs and possibilities to master the challenge
  • Economical views on the subject

The question of why America sends annual 300 Mrd $ to foreign countries for oil, which is answered with Lenin’s quote „The capitalists are so hungry for profits that they will sell us the rope to hang them with.“, and the addition „…and they will send us the money to buy the rope“ is a very typical view for Americans somehow, I think. Cowboy Smiley

Nevertheless, with todays technics our vehicles could be 50 %, buildings 80 % more efficient without change in lifestyle. Acting is not a question of money or ideology, but of intelligence.

What not comes in numbers here is the benefit in public health due to better air and water quality. Nothing is really new here, but the arguments may help you out in the field…

(Dr. Lester Lave, Co-Director Carnegie Mellon Electrical Industry Center; Dr. M. Granger Morgan, Director of the Climate Decision Making Center; Edward Rubin, Professor in Engineering and Public Policy and Mechanical Engineering, 1:15)

If you wanna know it really exactly, watch the following video too, which outlines the research and the process behind the Global Climate Change Report to the Bush administration in 2002. So yes, they know: Global warming is fact, it’s due human activities, without sun activities being a reason etc.

(And yes, this is a very dry one, but gives an excellent overview on the complexity of the matter, if you’d like to be fed with data, numbers and formulas by Ralph Cicerone, Chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, 1:10)

Published inEcologyScience

The Blue Brain of Lausanne

(Update Nov. 2009): German Article on Zeit Online http://www.zeit.de/2009/21/PD-Markram

On futur:plom I stumbled over a link to an article „Out of the blue“ on seedmagazine which describes the Blue Brain Project (with some nice simulation videos) from Lausanne here in Switzerland. It started in 2005 and aimed in a first step at creating a digital model of a single neuron.

In December 2006 the project reached the goal of simulating 10’000 neurons, which equivalents a 0.5 x 2 mm slice of a rat brain. To get me right: This project is not about emulating a brain by translating brain work into digital code in form of a tamagotchi – this is a supercomputer with 22.8 teraflops to simulate neuron networks on a biological level. The computer doesn’t think like a brain, the computer is acting as a neuron network.

Neuron with simulation data mapped in color.
Neuron with simulation data mapped in color.

Next step will be simulating a whole rat brain, then a human brain. The road map of ten years to this point may be a bit scary, but I like the approach because this is not reductionist science. By digitally rebuilding a brain we may get a better understanding of nature, which is more a holistic system than a four-dimensional machine. We may enjoy a paradigm shift in the near future… :please:

Now the really interesting part is about consciousness. Will this computer get one? Today I think possibly yes, because I don’t see consciousness as something mystical – thinking words, imagine pictures and planning strategies is simply an evolutionary advance. But there’s too this kind of consciousness one can reach by hushing the brain. In ordinary words: Will this computer get charity? Mercy? Will it see dying soldiers simply as collateral damage?

I guess so. In fact, from a certain point of view, the individual is not important – only the surviving of the system is. Valuation of individuals is a relatively new phenomena and actually bad for the gen pool.

It depends on what is defined as the system. Is it a tribe or an ethnic group, humanity or the earth, the universe? At this point Stanislav Lem comes to mind, especially his story „Golem XIV„. This technological singularity judged war simply as illogical (By the way: „Golem XIV“ is a must read in many ways!). However, I don’t think such computers will find a benefit in meditation – aside from standby mode.

Since „Out of the blue“ is a nine page read, you can get a small excerpt if you click on read more. And what do you think: Can a technological singularity reach higher consciousness? Speaking in the concept of souls: Can a machine get a soul? Or can humans „bewitch“ machines and get them a soul? Or is anyway everything illusion, including me typing this?

Published inScience